Martin left to nurse his wounds after crash
AFTER the high of winning on the Mur De Bretagne on Thursday, Ireland’s Dan Martin ended Stage 8 of the Tour de France having X-rays after a crash, that saw him lose 76 seconds on his rivals.
A touch of wheels and a sudden breaking in the peloton saw the Team UAE Emirates rider go down and a number of riders fell on top of him.
Despite getting going quickly, supported by a number of teammates, he was still 40 seconds down when the sprint teams upped the pace late on and eventually the gap was one minute 16 seconds and he has slipped to 31st overall.
Martin crawled into his team bus on all fours after crashing heavily, but X-rays revealed no fractures for the rider who finished sixth in the race despite riding several days with a broken back.
‘I was one of the first to crash,’ he said. ‘There was a bit of braking in front of me, it turned right and took my front wheel away and I couldn’t do anything. I’ve felt better obviously but nothing is broken.
Martin will be nursing cuts and bruises as attempts to survive today’s already-fearsome ninth stage from Arras to Roubaix, which includes 15 sections of cracked cobbled farm tracks used in the spring Classic race, the Paris-Roubaix.
He said: ‘I’m going to try and ride to get over the cobblestones, but it’s going to be sore. I think you always know it’s bad when they take off the bandages for the scan and the doctor goes “Ooh”. The race seems incredibly nervous this year. I thought after yesterday that people would realise that it hurts crashing, but obviously not. Hopefully I can survive through tomorrow’s stage now and we will see what the situation is after the rest day.’
Martin is now two minutes and 47 seconds back on Belgian race leader Greg van Avermaet from Team BMC.
Meanwhile, Mark Cavendish was a bit luckier having stayed upright when his wheel was clipped in the sprint finish in Amiens that saw Dylan Groenewegen of the Netherlands take his second stage win in a row. But Cavendish again hit out at his fellow racers for what he has called ‘choppy’ sprinting.
Yesterday the target of his ire was triple world champion Peter Sagan, who Cavendish said ‘bashed’ other riders out of his path. Sagan was disqualified from last year’s Tour after Cavendish crashed on stage four and was forced to abandon the race.
‘I followed Sagan,’ Cavendish said of his sprint into Amiens, ‘He bashes everyone else out the way so you do get a clear run following him. What can you do? At least it stops me having to think of excuses. I was in the perfect position. Coming around that corner with three (kilometres) to go, I lost my leadout men but I was all right.’
After a fast finish that saw both Fernando Gaviria and Andre Greipel relegated to the back of the field for barging and elbowing their way to the line, Cavendish remains stuck on 30 career stage wins, as he seeks to equal Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 victories.